TSG will be stronger than it was before. TSG's biggest weakness before was lack of CC - now Intimidating Shout is a 1 minute cooldown, and Holy Paladins have near-spammable Repentance - this is a huge deal for TSG because prior to this they had pretty much no CC at all and still could do quite well. As someone pointed out, the new dispel model makes roots a bigger issue since they can't be spam dispelled - but this isn't nearly the counter that they seem to think it is.

For starters, all death knights have death's advance now, which during the active means your snare is meaningless, and during the passive means your snare does very little. With AMS and Desecrated Ground, much of the time you won't be able to apply roots anyways. Warriors have 2 12 second cooldown charges, and a 30 second cooldown charge which removes all roots and snares, and a 30 second cooldown leap. They also have bladestorm, which removes and makes immune roots/snares/cc on a 90 second cooldown for 6 seconds, and Avatar which makes them immune to roots and snares for 20 seconds every 3 minutes.

It's only after all of the above that you have 8 second dispels from the holy paladin, and - 2 blessing of freedoms per cooldown - which means >100% uptime. So really, while roots are still a thing that TSG fears, the new TSG very much does not fear mages - if anything - mages just might fear the new TSG ;p

Don't forget the fact that dks are insanely high damaging and warriors have psycho burst. The avatar and the banner of warrior also have a long duration so even ice block may not save a mage from dying against this comp.
Clemency fits the role of holy paladin in this comp perfectly btw.

TSG will be stronger than it was before. TSG's biggest weakness before was lack of CC - now Intimidating Shout is a 1 minute cooldown, and Holy Paladins have near-spammable Repentance - this is a huge deal for TSG because prior to this they had pretty much no CC at all and still could do quite well. As someone pointed out, the new dispel model makes roots a bigger issue since they can't be spam dispelled - but this isn't nearly the counter that they seem to think it is.

For starters, all death knights have death's advance now, which during the active means your snare is meaningless, and during the passive means your snare does very little. With AMS and Desecrated Ground, much of the time you won't be able to apply roots anyways. Warriors have 2 12 second cooldown charges, and a 30 second cooldown charge which removes all roots and snares, and a 30 second cooldown leap. They also have bladestorm, which removes and makes immune roots/snares/cc on a 90 second cooldown for 6 seconds, and Avatar which makes them immune to roots and snares for 20 seconds every 3 minutes.

It's only after all of the above that you have 8 second dispels from the holy paladin, and - 2 blessing of freedoms per cooldown - which means >100% uptime. So really, while roots are still a thing that TSG fears, the new TSG very much does not fear mages - if anything - mages just might fear the new TSG ;p

Edit: I'll be playing Holy Pally in a TSG this season.

Originally Posted by Rorschachs

Don't forget the fact that dks are insanely high damaging and warriors have psycho burst. The avatar and the banner of warrior also have a long duration so even ice block may not save a mage from dying against this comp.
Clemency fits the role of holy paladin in this comp perfectly btw.

This is exactly what I think aswell. All 3 classes are a lot stronger than before with great synergy. Right now, it looks very viable and with all those casters setups everywhere, will be definately something new.

Along with what has been said about the improved mobility of the classes I want to point a few things out.

1: Necrotic strike + blood tap allows for you to still keep NS stacked pretty well and at points can make sure you have 4-5 death runes to use the ability spam like you use to before.
2: DKs now can apply a lot of pressure to healers if the target is LoS and about to dip below 35%, along with execute being broken as hell and hitting for upwards to 200k you are getting a 50k damage execute if the target is below 35% when the debuff ticks to full duration.
3: Frost dks can now dispel so warriors will not have to waste their shattering throw on bops and can keep it for bubbles/ice blocks etc.
4: Warriors now also baseline get a 3 second silence with a glyph on 2 abilities one being ranged... so you can double silence when going for kills.
5: Warrior and DK burst are both absurd. If you get lucky enough to have two oblits crit in a row in your burst rotation you can basically take someone below 50% in a global.
6: DK defensives no longer cost runic power for pet sac... which is huge IMO
7: DKs can glyph to allow their DC to ALSO count as an absorb which can be helpful defensively.
8: Warriors defensive stance buffed to baseline 25% damage reduction which allows for the team to actually go defensive and to wait for big cooldowns to be up once again.
9: Paladins get AOE throwdown along with their spamable CC
10: If you take desecrated ground you can basically be unpeelable and unccable for about 30 seconds straight vs. a lot of comps.

Along with what has been said about the improved mobility of the classes I want to point a few things out.

3: Frost dks can now dispel so warriors will not have to waste their shattering throw on bops and can keep it for bubbles/ice blocks etc.
4: Warriors now also baseline get a 3 second silence with a glyph on 2 abilities one being ranged... so you can double silence when going for kills.
7: DKs can glyph to allow their DC to ALSO count as an absorb which can be helpful defensively.
8: Warriors defensive stance buffed to baseline 25% damage reduction which allows for the team to actually go defensive and to wait for big cooldowns to be up once again.
9: Paladins get AOE throwdown along with their spamable CC
10: If you take desecrated ground you can basically be unpeelable and unccable for about 30 seconds straight vs. a lot of comps.

It will be a viable comp for sure.

3. The glyph is currently not worth it over other glyph choices.
4. They DR with strang.
7. On live it shields for 8k. And it doesn't stack on top of each other. And you need the DCs for damage.
8. A 25% damage reduction on the warrior doesn't allow the entire team to be defensive.
9. They get AOE blind. And lets see... Rep --> Hoj --> Blinding Light.. Damn. Really spammable.
10. Desecrated ground lasts for 10 seconds. Freedom lasts for 8. DA lasts for 6. That's 24 on the DK and 18 on the warrior, which also causes a loss in CC (DK AOE stun is lost to Desecrated ground) and also the enemies can simply run out of the area which causes the dk to leave the zone! Marvelous!

3. The glyph is currently not worth it over other glyph choices.
4. They DR with strang.
7. On live it shields for 8k. And it doesn't stack on top of each other. And you need the DCs for damage.
8. A 25% damage reduction on the warrior doesn't allow the entire team to be defensive.
9. They get AOE blind. And lets see... Rep --> Hoj --> Blinding Light.. Damn. Really spammable.
10. Desecrated ground lasts for 10 seconds. Freedom lasts for 8. DA lasts for 6. That's 24 on the DK and 18 on the warrior, which also causes a loss in CC (DK AOE stun is lost to Desecrated ground) and also the enemies can simply run out of the area which causes the dk to leave the zone! Marvelous!

3. As a frost DK yes it is worth taking because you are constantly getting free procs, and getting the dispel is great and the damage difference between that and HB vs the effect of dispeling potentially 10k+ life off of the target from buffs etc can be a great addition.

As a dk with 2400 experience 3 seasons in a row the only viable glyphs are: Dark sim, DnD (then again 20 seconds of no slow if you are taking chilblains is complete garbage IMO) enduring infection (to make sure your oblits are always hitting for full damage and no dispelled diseases), IBF, Icy touch, Strang, Outbreak.

Of those I will be taking IBF, Dark Sim, Icy touch vs any comp that offensive dispels would be good (druids, priest healers mainly). This might not be the best glyph with say a warrior, enhance shaman or a hunter partner but if you are running things like liberty, shadowcleave, etc etc it will be a great glyph.

Otherwise I'm going to run IBF, Dark Sim, Enduring infection (imo the outbreak glyph is crap due to the fact that by the time you use both Outbreak and UHB outbreak is up again)

7. Didn't know it didn't stack, so that was my mistake.

8. That is correct but with IBF glyph you can get out of hairy situations easier and allow for easier retreat, if the warrior is taking less damage and the DK can get away with freedoms etc. I mean it adds survivability to the warrior in general which makes the team more durable as a whole since you don't need to really worry about it getting globaled in the time it takes to heal someone else etc etc.

9. Did you even read repentance's tooltip?

10. HOJ, dragon's roar/Shockwave, CoI (chilblains) can all help with keeping them in the area. It also acts as a second trinket... which IMO is better than a stun that will DR heavily with the stun of the paladin and warrior stun... same shit though people can run away from your stun since it has to stack 5 times in 8 seconds (IIRC its 1 tick per second). So if they are out of your range for 4 seconds you don't get anything from it really (if they are freedom'd when you use it, etc) DK can also stay in it... deathgrip can actually be used to keep higher uptime on the target as well. With DKS being squishy overall it seems the extra trinket would be extremely beneficial for them to actually have some more defensive options.

was wondering if you guys see us being more viable in tsg as unholy or frost. they both bring the same damage buffs/debuffs now in mop but i see the differences are unholy getting more necrotic strikes out being that they have more deathrunes with reaping where frost only has 2 death runes that can be brought back after used with ERW or bloodtap

was wondering if you guys see us being more viable in tsg as unholy or frost. they both bring the same damage buffs/debuffs now in mop but i see the differences are unholy getting more necrotic strikes out being that they have more deathrunes with reaping where frost only has 2 death runes that can be brought back after used with ERW or bloodtap

Frost hands down.

Frost gets a good amount of death runes as well via blood tap for NS anyway.

Unholy gets 4 death runes to use opposed to use, frost gets 2 baseline but frost will take blood tap over runic corruption which will allow for more necrotics to be used.

On live necrotic gives 100% ap as negative healing plus 165% weapon damage. So in turn you are doing 660% weapon damage and 400% of attack power as anti-healing. Which should be about 80k anti-healing. So its 80kish anti-healing (no cooldowns to increase AP) plus 660% weapon damage vs. 780% weapon damage as pure damage. I think NS beats out SS for sure.

200% weapon damage for 2 runes though (festering) vs 400% weapon damage from oblit is a huge difference. I mean as it stands on live my oblits are critting for 140k with cds popped which after resil reduction etc on most targets is close to 1/3 of their life.

The deal breaker for me is the damage done for using your runic power. Frost gets 20 RP frost strikes where as unholy's ability costs 32 runic power. So for 320 RP you get 10 death coils vs frost's 16 frost strikes. 16 frost strikes = 6.4 death runes, so if you get lucky with your procs you will get 4.5 runes with RE and I'm not exactly sure how many with RC (i assume around 6) but those runes are not usable for any ability and are normally generated as frost/blood/unholy.

Frost's runes are streamlined much better and it's abilities IMO use the runes much better in mop.

Unholy's pet damage and gargoyle are nice and needs to be factored in, as well as the stun that the pet provides... but overall I really see frost being better especially if they can keep diseases on a target for 1.5 minuets out of every 2.5 mins and only need to re-apply blood plague due to free howling blasts. It also synergizes better with the dark sim glyph since dark sim's cost is the exact same as a frost strike and RP is also more abundant for frost than unholy.

- In MoP, warrior's blow recklessness (50% more crits on abilities for 12 seconds) and now Skull Banner (20% bigger crits for their team) before going for burst on their target (so probably bladestorm, but maybe not)
- To Unholy DK's, 20% bigger crits are nice - but crit isn't (last I was aware which admittedly was pre 5.0.4) wasn't an important stat to unholy
- Frost DKs get tons of crits, specifically through Killing Machine which causes their Obliterates to have 100% crit chance, so when a Frost DK is going for a kill - ERW (all runes back) and spams Obliterates hopefully with a few Killing Machine procs in there, their burst is now 20% bigger in TSG than it would be with any other partner

So Frost / Warrior also synergizes better than Unholy / Warrior.

I say warrior, because it's ever so slightly possible that fury pvp may be back now (and both warriors have this synergy).